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People move to places with wide open spaces to get away from crowded urban or suburban places. That makes the wide-open places less wide-open. Some of those people have or get big dogs without knowing or caring about what’s involved. Lowers the quality of life for you and your dogs, for sure. I hope it also creates dog-training opportunities for you.
Same thing’s happening where I live in the lower Hudson Valley. I took a long walk w/my client, now friend, Ingrid and her dog Honey in the local woods today. She lived on 24 acres in NJ and her dogs ran leashless all the time. No problem. Now she has to learn how to safely walk her dog — off leash, eventually — in the local woods, the park, as well as on-leash on village streets, etc. I spend a lot of time explaining and showing how to practice defensive dog walking. I lay out various scenarios — a charging off-leash dog, a lunging on-leash dog, a rabid racoon, etc etc etc. — and how to handle each one. Although most people with dogs are polite and considerate, and rabid animals or rattlesnakes are rare, I lay out plans for every possible situation I can think of. It might not seem like part of ‘dog training’ but imo it’s important, especially for people new to this particular environment and/or to dogs. Imo, it’s as important as Come, Heel, Leave It, Look, etc etc etc. As a matter of fact, it’s where the rubber (training) meets the road (the real world).
